ES: "Let me state it in a less purely cynical way—it’s not that I’m not cynical, trust me. The status quo is enormously powerful. Very few people really want to look at it and say, “The system’s not working. We’ve got to do something different.”

If you’re an elected official, what brought you to the dance is what you want to keep doing. By definition, you’re there as a consequence of the current system, so how bad can it really be?"

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The Democratic party is slogging its way left and having an intense, but much needed debate about its values, priorities, agenda. This is encouraging. I'm also hopeful that momentum eventually builds around the repudiation of special interests/big money -- riddance of such funding would help optics (confidence in our politicians/system) and should help cynical, would-be voters to get off the sidelines and participate. And not to mention, if a politicians funding is overwhelmingly from micro/small donations, it should steer them towards working more impact-fully (and truthfully) for the people. If a politician can't inspire enough people to donate a few bucks to fund their campaign, should they be running anyway? Big money often props up hand-picked politicians (artificially) that we, the people, are hardly inspired by. Kick out the big money and we'll likely have a better crop of politicians to choose from.